The Burn Pile

Last night the wind was still and the weather mild so we lit our burn pile and pulled up a couple of chairs to tend it and sit together to watch the life in the fire. This time we were burning some of the last of the combustible pieces of the eleven years of accumulation here on the farm.

In the October soon after we’d moved here, we sat together around a similar bonfire and listened to a pair of Great Horned Owls sing their love duet from the tall cottonwoods on the east side of the garden. That was a moment of magic and optimism. We dreamed aloud to each other about our future here, the farm stand we would have, the vegetables we would grow. We named the farm that night. It was an inside joke. Now, we are burning the hand painted white, red, green and blue signs we made to direct passers by to the farm. We saved just one. We’ll leave it in the back of one of the stalls in the barn for the new owners to come upon when they’re exploring their new territory. F.A. Farm, they might wonder. What was that?

Now we are wrapping up our lives here, divesting of almost everything. We’re down to a pile of boxes in a stall in the barn, some essential garden tools, our two old bikes and the furniture we need to live until we leave the house and lock the door. Orion has danced over the barn as the fire has burned lower and the coyotes are yipping off in the near distance, a pack of them after some mice or a stoat they’ve flushed. No owls tonight.